Philip Glass Pens Walt Disney Opera. The headline enough was enough to make my jaw drop when I read it in Variety. And just to sweeten the deal, the opera is "to be staged in collaboration with Brit legit troupe Improbable." -- the company co-founded by the creators of Shockheaded Peter!! Awesome! One downside: it's slated for the 2012-2013 season, by which time we'll probably just watch the opera on ipod screens that have been installed inside our minds.

Opera, planned to kick off City Opera's 2012-13 season, will be based on Peter Stephan Jungk's German-language novel "The Perfect American." Story imagines the last months of Disney as seen through the eyes of a fictional Austrian cartoonist who worked for him.

new music

Great band names don't always represent great tunes. Parachute Musical, however, lives up to it's snappy moniker with zesty pop appeal. I like the fun piano riffs on "Dear Jacksonville," and "Instead" is gorgeous. Comparisons to Rufus Wainwright and Ben Folds are well-deserved. Check them out on myspace.

[TOS]

Consider this a gentle reminder that [TITLE OF SHOW] is ending it's Broadway run on October 12th. That means you only have 2.5 weeks to catch the little show that could at it's triumphant apex of achievement!

There's a little rumor that [TOS] might find life after Broadway, but all that is very up in the air, so go catch it this weekend, or next weekend.

I mean Rosie says you should see it, so...

It really is a sweet, delightful, and original musical, and that's pretty hard to come by on Broadway.

things the world does not need

Here is something Broadway doesn't need: A musical adaptation of AMERICAN PSYCHO. Yes, folks, it's true, the macabre thriller is in development for the bright lights of Broadway! I'm picturing How to Succeed meets Chess meets Dance of the Vampires, and that's not a pretty picture. High hopes for a big tap number about high-quality business cards, and a sweet serenade titled "Hey Paul!"

What else does the world NOT NEED? Oh, how about a television show based on 10 Things I Hate About You? Seriously. Casting notices went out yesterday. Blargh!

BEAST

On the list of comedy-killers, torrential downpours and sleepy matinee audiences should be placed right under cancer jokes. Unfortunately, the afternoon performance of BEAST I saw* was subject to both, and the "marauding adventure" felt less like a comedy and more like an incensed playwright's threatening letter to George W. Bush, a letter that happened to exist in the form of a play. Despite the usual fantastic performances by Lisa Joyce** and Logan Marshall-Green, playwright Michael Weller and director Jo Bonney never escape the clutches of the vindictive and angry political agenda of the play, and the characters are seen less as humans than they are as symbols and objects used to illustrate that agenda. Rather than appreciating the story unfolding onstage, I couldn't help but feel subjected to an onslaught of subtextual howls, including "the Iraq war is terrible!" and "we are abandoning our veterans!" and of course "George W. Bush is a total moron!", all of which are sadly true, but don't add up to good and engaging theater. Watching Marshall-Green and Corey Stoll's maimed, scarred, half-crazed soldiers fumble through a series of exchanges with blind prostitutes, backwards truck drivers, and desperate army widows is a lot to ask of an audience. If the point of such a difficult, upsetting journey is nothing more than a grotesque two-hour lambasting of the Bush administration, one has to wonder if there's a better way to incite change in the world.

*I do feel compelled to mention that the performance I was invited to of BEAST was a fairly early preview, and to my understanding, there were still some pretty major changes happening in the process. If they have since found their footing, it's possible that the BEAST onstage now at NYTW is an entirely different animal than the one I saw. However, my personal taste for political dramas is pretty specific, and I particularly dislike the feeling of being a captive audience for a playwright who is preaching to the choir about the evils of war, so it's hard for me to imagine feeling much differently, even if they really nailed it.

**Lisa Joyce is amazing. She really should be more famous by now. She is one of the most consistent and startlingly truthful young actresses today, in a class with Anna Paquin and a select few others. Watch out for this one.

Pssst...

I hear that indie smash hit ONCE is coming to Broadway...

Meme my ipod

Jaime tagged me in this fun meme. Despite my political leanings, turns out I wouldn't make it very far if I ran for president. Above is just one voter's response to my song list! Here are the rules:

1. Turn your iPod (or whatever thing houses your music collection) on shuffle
2. See how long it takes you to get to a song that'll disqualify you from the Presidency.

Here we go...

1. First up is Do Me, Baby, by Prince. "Take me baby... kiss me all over... play with my love" Hmm, the religious right might have a bone to pick with Presidential Candidate Moxie the Maven over that lyric. On the other hand, certain conservatives might really respond to the lyrics, "Well, isnt it supposed to take a long time? Im not gonna stop till the war is over." Moxie for President!! The campaign rolls onward!!!

2. The campaign grinds to a halt with Rainy Day Women Numbers 12 & 35, by Bob Dylan, a.k.a. Everybody Must Get Stoned. Hey, I'm a uniter, not a divider! Republicans, Democrats, red or blue, come on, everybody must get stoned! No? Oh, okay.

I didn't make it very far, but maybe these bloggers will. Gus23, Rocco, Clint, Vera Vogue, and brookLyn gaL, tag, you're it!

noel gallagher believes that children are our future

"If it puts little plastic guitars into kids' hands and fires their imaginations, I think that's a good thing. It's harmless fun, innit. I'd rather that genre of video games than somebody getting their fucking head chopped off with a samurai sword while getting fucked by a goblin up the arse with a laser. Do you know what I mean?" — Noel Gallagher on Guitar Hero

[via vulture, music radar, kotaku]

PRINCE: PUT ART BACK ON B'WAY

When I saw this headline from the Post, I totally thought they were talking about the "Purple Rain" Prince, got all excited... turns out it's just good old Hal weighing in.

Daniel Radcliffe

Some might call this "the photo we've all been waiting for"... vogue.com

"A friend of mine once said, 'God—the things you say!' " Radcliffe recalls. "I thought, Imagine the things I don't say. You can't possibly imagine what it's like to actually live inside this head."

Aww, spoken like a true movie star. They grow up so fast!

Did you know that David Hasselhoff has a new social networking site? Well, he does, and it's called HoffSpace, natch. "For the love of God, WHY," you ask? Let's let him explain...

"I realized that while two people from two entirely different countries and backgrounds may seem to have nothing in common, the only thing they might have in common is me."

[via Vulture]

Suckwatch: A Tale of Two Cities

I hear that A Tale of Two Cities is every inch the hot mess I predicted! An anonymous industry insider called me during intermission at a recent performance, urging me to "get to the theater right now and see what's left of this mess, because there's no way they could possibly have any more performances after tonight!" From my pal's description, the show sounds like a hodge-podge of the worst moments of Les Mis, The Scarlett Pimpernel, and Jekyll and Hyde. Oh my!

I don't see what could be so terrible about a show that starts it's press releases with these words:

A Tale of Two Cities, a new musical to quicken the hearts of fans of sprawling romantic historical epics — the kind of show where characters in the shadows sing about the light of tomorrow — begins its Broadway life Aug. 19 at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. (emphasis mine)

I mean, wow.

Goosebumps coming to the multiplex!

Finally, a big-screen adaptation of R.L. Stein's Goosebumps series is in the works! Writers Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander are in negotiations to pen a live-action adaptation for Columbia Pictures. Not only did these dudes write Man on the Moon, Ed Wood, and Tales from the Crypt, but the duo also penned Problem Child, the early 90's film that gave us the unforgettable image of John Ritter drinking something he thought was lemonade, but was in fact his kid's urine. In other words, they are the perfect pair to adapt the creepy but goofy series for the screen.

Mmm, Goosebumps... the very word invokes a sense memory overload of my 12-year-old self making frantic trips back and forth to the local library on my bike, desperate to read the next book. And oh, how thrillingly frightful they were! Night of the Living Dummy! One Day at Horrorland! A Shocker on Shock Street! The Haunted Mask! Fun Fact: According to the Hollywood Reporter, the books "have grossed hundreds of millions for Stine and Scholastic, second only to the "Harry Potter" series."

The Oratorial Genius of Roseanne

I'd almost forgotten how much I lurve Roseanne Barr's blog, Roseanne's World. Woman has a way with words like no other.

On Jon Voight: "is a frightened little girl in a pink ballet tutu, who acts like Obama just wandered in from the rain forest with a bone thru his nose and a communist pamphlet in his loincloth. The neocons who own jon voight and make him dance on the chabad telethons are the worst most elitist people on earth. glen beck and jon voight are their bitches... both of them are used tampons who must be flushed down the toilet immediately! jon voight your evil spawn angelina jolie and her vacuous hubby brad pitt make about forty million dollars a year in violent psychopathic movies and give away three of it to starving children trying to look as if they give a crap about humanity as they spit out more dunces that will consume more than their fair share and wreck the earth even more. (just sayin')."

[via The Huffinton Post]

Hunter Parrish in Spring Awakening

Speaking of Spring Awakening, it seems that people out there are dying for the dirty details on the hunky new Melchior, Hunter Parrish. I haven't seen him play the role, but I have seen him on Weeds, and here's what I know: 1) I don't care how young he is, boy is damn sexy and I would definitely hit that. 2) There's a video of him in rehearsal right here. Anybody seen him yet? Care to share?